


Mothers' Day

by skyeward



Series: Forever [14]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Children, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Mother's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 09:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10919139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyeward/pseuds/skyeward
Summary: Baby Alexandra is all grown up and treating her parents to Mothers' Day breakfast.Well, she's five. There is a mess involved.





	Mothers' Day

The sun, muffled by the cloudy glass, streamed warm and gentle over two sleeping bodies in the center of a wide mattress. The sheet and blanket that once covered them had been pushed to the floor in the night, and all they had to keep them warm were well-loved t-shirts and each other.

A soft scratching came at the door, and one dark head stirred. She made a soft inquisitive sound, still half-asleep, and received only a sleepy grunt in response.

The scratching came again, a little louder this time, and then a small voice through the bedroom door.

“Mummy? Jack?”

“Alexandra?”

More awake by the second, Miranda began to disentangle herself from Jack, who grunted again - irritably this time - and clung tighter.

“Mummy, can you open the door please?”

“Yes darling, I’m coming,” Miranda called gently to her daughter, then turned to hiss at Jack. “Let go and put some knickers on!”

More grunting, followed by an aggrieved sigh, but Jack did as she was told. By the time Miranda shuffled over to the door and opened it, Jack was sitting up and wearing underwear.

Standing in the doorway, dressed in her Blasto Saves Christmas pajamas, stood five-year-old Alexandra with her small hands wrapped tightly around the biggest coffee mug they owned, an insulated monstrosity that held the better part of a pot’s worth. The pockets of her pajamas, both tops and bottoms, bulged comically. The serious look on her face, though, forestalled any laughter. She took three careful steps into the room, looking down at the coffee cup the whole time to prevent any spills.

“Mummy, Jack,” she announced with a grin only slightly ruined by the very close eye she was keeping on the coffee mug, “Happy Mothers’ Day!”

Miranda peered past her daughter towards the kitchen; through the open door she could see a small section of counter. It was covered in what she could only assume were coffee grounds. She glanced back down to her smiling daughter, still holding up her lovingly-crafted Mothers’ Day breakfast, and shut the door. The mess could wait.

As soon as Miranda relieved the child of her burden, Alexandra took off running. One flying leap later, she was bouncing on their bed, laughing, and unloading her pockets. Package after package of fruit snacks, mini muffins, and cookies made their appearances as Miranda stood by, hiding her face behind the coffee cup as she struggled to hold back tears. Jack, she could see, wasn’t doing any better - her eyes were suspiciously bright as Alexandra finished dumping food on the bed and crawled into her lap.

Miranda circled around to that side of the bed, bending down to press a kiss to each dark head.

“It’s okay to cry, you know,” she murmured softly into Jack’s ear, but the other woman just scoffed and wrapped her thin arms tighter around the now-chattering five-year-old.

“I’m not crying! Crying is for cheerleaders and, and… five-year-olds. With giant coffees and… mini muffins.” The tears were rolling down her face in earnest now, and Alexandra was growing visibly upset as she twisted in Jack’s lap and patted her face, smearing tears.

“Jack? Jack? I’m too big for cuddles?”

If Miranda didn’t interfere soon, both of them would be crying.

She set the coffee aside on the bedside table, then gently scooped Alexandra out of Jack’s arms. Jack would want to be left alone, she knew, so she carted their daughter out into the kitchen for a moment.

Closer-up, she could see not only coffee grounds but water and sugar on the counter as well, and two missing dining chairs. One was in front of the coffee maker. The other, she suspected, was behind the open pantry door that she could see from the corner of her eye. With an effort, she set the mess aside.

She set the child down. This would do as a distraction.

“How about we work on this mess for a few minutes? Jack needs some quiet time.”

Alexandra nodded silently, her small face solemn, and accepted the dustpan that Miranda handed her. They worked silently for a few minutes, until finally Alexandra spoke up.

“Mummy?” she asked, a distinctly watery sound in her voice, “I hurt Jack?”

“No, my love, not at all.” Miranda took the dustpan from her, knowing that cleaning was over for the moment, and dumped it into the recycler. She had to stay calm, she knew, otherwise she would set both of them off. “Jack was crying because she’s happy. People cry for all kinds of reasons other than sadness, like happiness or anger. Jack loves you very much, and it made her so happy when you brought us breakfast that she started to cry.”

Wide brown eyes, so much like Jack’s, stared back at her in disbelief.

“But Mummy, Jack don’t cry!”

“Doesn’t,” Miranda corrected gently. “And she doesn’t _like_ to cry because it makes her feel weak, but everybody cries sometimes.”

“Not me!”

“Darling, you cried the day before yesterday because you dropped your biscuit on the floor.”

The small face scrunched up for a moment, then smoothed out.

“Oh, yeah. I forget. Mummy, let’s go see Jack, okay?” She held out one small hand, which Miranda took.  “I gotta tell her. Crying is okay.”

They walked slowly back towards the bedroom, Miranda hoping to give Jack as much time as possible to get herself together. After the better part of a decade together, Jack was a great deal better at dealing with her emotions, but some things were just etched too deeply; she’d never be comfortable with emotional displays that didn’t involve violence. Not that Miranda herself was much better, she mused as she approached the bedroom door. She still had to remind herself to actually express emotions from time to time.

Luckily, their daughter seemed to be picking up the best of the two of them; she was bright and witty, self-possessed and self-confident, and not at all shy about expressing herself. Miranda’s heart tightened and she squeezed the hand in hers gently. She never wanted her gentle, loving child to go through what she had. What either of them had.

She pushed the door open, and found Jack sitting right where they’d left her, face dry. She managed a small smile as Miranda sat on the opposite edge of the bed, lifting Alexandra to allow her scuttle across the mattress into Jack’s arms.

“Jack!” the little girl exclaimed, placing one hand firmly on each of Jack’s cheeks. Jack, startled, let out a small laugh.

“What’s up, buttercup?”

Miranda couldn’t see her daughter’s face from where she sat, but she could hear the serious tone in her small voice as she spoke, “I love you, Jack. Crying is okay.”

Miranda could also see the tears building in Jack’s eyes again as her wife nodded slightly and hugged the child close.

“I love you too, mini-me. And I’ll try to remember that.”

“Hey!” protested Alexandra, squirming in her mother’s grip. “Don't squish me!”

“What did you say? Please tickle me? Okay!”

Sudden shrieking, as Jack tickled her daughter’s ribs, and then laughter filled the room. Miranda got up to rescue the coffee from Jack’s bedside table, then stood there watching as the two most important people in her life started throwing slightly-smushed snacks at each other.

She sipped the coffee and smiled slowly, her heart overflowing over with feeling.

“Happy Mothers’ Day,” she murmured, and then took a packet of muffins to the face.


End file.
